Ubuntu
compiz package

  1. Bug #764330
  2. Comment #20

Comment 20 for bug 764330

Revision history for this message
Colin D Bennett (colinb) wrote : Re: Move window annoying slow with compiz

Another confirmation that Unity gets slow after running for a while. Unity runs fine when I first boot up, but after a while things get unusable: Dragging windows to move them is nearly impossible, I sometimes have to wait 5+ seconds for the window to react to a drag. Switching desktops is also extremely slow. When I hit Ctrl+Alt+Right to switch to the right desktop, nothing happens for a few seconds, and then it switches.

Another problem is that the “overlay scrollbars” are reacting extremely slow as well. Of course they are completely unusable! In evince (Document Viewer) and nautilus (File/Folder Browser), for instance here is what happens: Move mouse near the slim little scroll thumb indicator; the overlay scrollbar widget quickly appears. I press the mouse button on the scrollbar widget and drag up or down a hundred pixels or so and wait... it takes 5+ seconds for anything to happen, but eventually the content jumps and the overlay scrollbar widget jumps under the mouse. If, instead of dragging the overlay scrollbar popup thumb, I click the Up/Down arrows on it, the reaction is immediate.

I am definitely going to switch back to the “Ubuntu Classic” session and hope it works better. I want to like Unity, but this performance problem is a killer.

Details
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OS: Ubuntu 11.04 amd64
Graphics driver: nvidia (package nvidia-173 173.14.30-0ubuntu1)
Graphics hardware: NVIDIA GPU GeForce 9600M GT (G96) Memory: 524288 kBytes
Machine: MacBook Pro 5,1 - 4 GiB RAM

After running for a while, top (sort by memory usage) shows:
    VIRT RES %CPU %MEM COMMAND
  1,164m 585m 0 14.9 unity-panel-ser
  1,420m 458m 2 11.6 firefox-bin
    701m 328m 0 8.3 Xorg
    990m 266m 0 6.8 nautilus
    858m 210m 0 5.3 gnome-power-man
  1,042m 172m 2 4.4 compiz
    534m 127m 0 3.2 evince

unity-panel-service is using over 512 MB of RAM? What is it doing with all my memory?! As you can see, the system processes (unity-panel-service, Xorg, gnome-power-manager, and compiz) are taking up over 1.2 GB of RAM alone. This is crazy.